


The Sopronos

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7, The Sopranos
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: Servalan's psychostrategist must have all kinds of valuable intel, mustn't he? Or at least he can provide therapy and marriage counseling during his brief sojourn on Liberator.
Relationships: Jenna Stannis/Carnellfi, Roj Blake/Kerr Avon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: The House Always Sins





	The Sopronos

_“Cunnilingus and psychiatry have brought us to this.”_

WHY A DUCK? 

“...Yes, I can understand why you found this dream upsetting.” Dr. Carnellfi said. “The flock of ducks, representing the happy family that has been denied to you and that you find so compelling, flew away. And the mother duck flew away with your penis, showing your inability to accept that, as a woman, you do not have a penis.”

Supreme Commander Antonia Servalan drained her blue-and-white paper coffee cup and jammed the empty cup down on a low table. 

“I don’t have to listen to this kind of Freudian crap as long as there are slave pits and radioactive mines.”

Carnellfi made a few notes on a yellow pad cossetted within a manila file folder. 

“I see. You don’t want to pursue these issues, and therefore you develop a phantasy of ‘shafting’ me. You’ll have to make your decision soon, you know. The places in the Old Alphas Home fill up quickly.”

“It’s a residence,” Servalan said resentfully. “A very elegant and luxurious residence. It’s a lot nicer than many places I’ve been billeted in, I can assure you of that. And I can’t leave her on her own — she’s simply become an embarrassment. Having the servants flogged in the middle of a banquet — even before the sorbet —” Servalan shuddered.

“What about the rest of the family?”

“Francesca Alberta? That dried-up old bag never thinks about anything except show-jumping and the next designer gown she’s going to buy. As if there were anywhere to be seen by anyone who counts on Denecron.”

“How does it make you feel that your sister is so much older?”

“I hardly know her. As you know — not personally, of course — Alpha dynastic alliances are ar-ranged in childhood and consummated at a very early age. In fact, I’ve got a niece and a nephew who are older than I am.”

“But you, yourself, are unmarried.”

Not for the first time, the Supreme Commander wondered why she exposed herself to danger of demotion (or worse) to put up with this sort of thing. But that second panic attack had frightened her badly. If she didn’t have some form of stress relief, and a reliable source of untraceable psy-chochemicals, then the enemy that finally felled her would be within her own body rather than one of the numerous exogenous contenders.

“I have all the satisfactions of my career. And I think of my nephew Christopher as a protégé, almost as a son.”

“Even though he’s older than you. Tell me about him.”

“He’s a good boy,” Servalan said. “A fine officer. He sees his duty and he does it. You may end up with rather fewer civilians than when you started, but what of that? Even in the Federation, civilians are in the majority.”

CREATIVE OUTLET

With a skill borne of long practice, Christopher Travis flicked open the laptop computer’s case, booted up, and opened the file containing the latest draft of his screenplay.

TREVINO  
I must be loyle to my Supreme Commander,  
so somethin better get clipped around  
here besides her hair, if you see what I mean 

RONTANO  
Fuhgeddabouddit

He typed rapidly, with the one hand that had working fingers. Absently, he tapped the lazeron ring against his teeth as he pondered the next plot development. 

PEOPLE SAY, BELIEVE HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE,  
SOME OR NONE OF WHAT YOU HEAR

Cally took the datacube out of the reader and tossed it from hand to hand as she pondered. It all depended on whether that rumour that Vila picked up on his last shore leave was true or not.

“Vila heard somebody sniggering about Supreme Commander Servalan — said that she was having her head shrunk. But then Denecron is known as a hotbed of subversion; we wouldn’t have let him go there otherwise.” Cally blushed a little, and looked down. “But I don’t know if you can believe everything they say about that family. Vila also said...” (Cally stopped to ponder an appropriate euphemism, while Blake raised his eyebrows at the image of a chewed carpet that she sent inadvertently) “...that, err, that the President’s mistress has divulged that he is a devoted and skillful practitioner of cunnilingus.” Cally stopped to ponder whether ‘divulged’ was dirty or just sounded that way.

“He’ll get the women’s vote, anyway,” Blake said. “And the niece is in the hands of the puppeteers, eh? I can almost find it in my heart to feel sorry for her for that. It’s not natural, messing about with the mind like that.”

“You can’t analogise a voluntary process of therapy to the hideous torture you were subjected to,” Cally said. “But then again, I don’t want to make you feel sorry for him... I think he should be the subject of our next mission.” 

She backtracked a bit. 

“They also say that this chap...” Cally put the cube into the reader for the main viewer, and a large publicity photo of popped up on the screen, “is her decorative staff trick-cyclist. I was just relaxing with the Journal of Xenopsychiatry the other day, and it says that he — Jon Carnellfi — will be giv-ing a paper at a conference on Marvoxcet in a couple of weeks. Security there is somewhat on the lax side. The paper is called, ah, Disintermediating the ‘i’... Gaze Theory Examines the Gesamtkunswerk of the Family Romance.” 

“Is any of that in Standard?” Blake asked. 

#17, WITH SOME FEATURES OF #11

Long-term prisoners, they say, have spent so much time in each other’s company (and have so little that is novel to contribute) that they can just call out a code number and get a horselaugh without bothering to tell the joke. Vila realised that that might very well have been his fate on Cygnus Alpha. 

But he didn’t think that quarterdeck arguments were so all-fired bloody different. Cally presented her proposal: kidnap Carnellfi, squeeze him dry, shoot him, put his body out with the trash. She got four yes votes and one concurrence: the ecologically-minded Gan suggested waiting for recycling day.

And once again, with an air of inevitability, they argued pro forma the ethics of harming a few for the benefit of the many, the regrettable necessity of force against force, the inability to keep one’s skirts out of the muddy gutter of revolution...

Whistling past the graveyard, Vila thought. Or the non-graveyard. Not that he wanted them to im-prove, but he recognised that the crew was quite deficient at up-close-and-personal killing in cold blood. They could put up a poster on the bulletin board: Number of Days Without Killing Travis, and just up the total by one every day.

I’m ruthless! Blake would trumpet. See your ruthless and raise you Realpolitik, Avon would sneer. No, I’m really ruthless, Cally would say or think, I’ve got the energy because I don’t have to par-ticipate in the dick-measuring contest. Sorry, chaps, the old ruthlessness has been limited, Gan would vote (with two abstentions, from Vila and Jenna).

The consensus was that as long as their prisoner remained alive, they would be vigilant, but not abusive. So they’d keep him locked up in the brig, with the surveillance camera on constantly. The duties of the watch would be enlarged to include a rapid scan of the past shift’s surveillance tapes. 

They all agreed it would be amusing actually to abide by the Federation’s treaty rules on treatment of prisoners of war. So — a locked door was acceptable. Cell to be heated, if combatant billets were heated. Clean, fresh water not to be withheld. Rations to provide adequate calories and nutrients. Sound prison uniforms, not rags. 

Vila was detailed to wipe down the stainless-steel surfaces with disinfectant, make up the bunk (Avon warned him not to use the 230-count sheets), make sure that the air filter and water dis-penser were working, lay out a set of disposable coveralls and boots, and stock the cupboard with ration bars.

Being sure to bring extra credits for late registration, Cally and Gan teleported down to the Mar-voxcet Marriott. There was a schedule change, so Dr. Carnellfi presented his paper two hours later than scheduled. Cally sat in the auditorium, rapt. Gan was inured to suffering. 

Luckily for them, Carnellfi’s hotel room was at the dim end of the corridor, far from the lift. They lurked in the dimness until he appeared with a briefcase full of conference handouts slung over his shoulder and his keycard in his hand. Gan stood with his broad back to any potential witnesses (none arrived) as Cally leapt out, got her arm around Carnellfi’s neck, and held him as he slumped into the effects of the tranquiliser pad. 

They dragged him down the corridor to the lift, sort of diagonal, one arm over Gan’s shoulder, one over Cally’s. They did pass a few conference attenders (Cally thought she was the only person there whom it was truly accurate to describe as an attendee), but no one found anything alarming in the spectacle of a plotzed academic being escorted somewhere to sober up.

SESSION NOTES

“What have you got from that interrogation field manual?” Blake asked. Avon pulled the last acetate from the printer and held it up to read it. 

“It’s rather like dual therapy. Chemically enhanced suggestibility, intermediated through Orac. One of us will, so to speak, become the medium onto which his memories are copied.”

“I’ll go first,” Blake said. No one volunteered to replace him.

Cally and Vila stood, weapons poised, as Carnellfi draped himself gracefully over the treatment couch and Blake secured the restraint bands. Cally brushed a lock of silky blond hair away from Carnellfi’s brow, wiped his forehead with an alcohol pad, and then attached the lead. Blake sat down in the nearby chair and stuck on the other lead without bothering with the disinfectant. Cally connected both the leads to Orac and then injected Carnellfi with a cocktail of relaxants, euphori-ants, anti-inhibitors, and memory boosters. 

Blake closed his eyes. At first, he experienced nothing but a cacophony of flashing lights, clangor-ous noises, and lancing flashes of memory that disappeared before they could be grasped. But, as the drugs took hold on Carnellfi, the puppeteer began to re-experience all the sensations of a ses-sion with Servalan, and transmitted them all to Blake, through the medium of Orac.

Blake could see part of the consulting room (although its details were so familiar to Carnellfi as to blur), and hear Servalan’s low, hypnotic voice. Hypnotic indeed. Blake could feel ‘his’ attention wandering, could feel ‘himself’ stretching his legs, uttering soothing platitudes, and irritably shifting his boredom-numbed arse.

Fifty minutes later, Cally brought them out.

Ducks? Blake thought. Servalan keeps talking about ducks. How bizarre.

WE WERE EYELASH TO EYELASH. AND THE OTHER FELLOW BLINKED.

“How very unlike the home life of our own dear Queen,” Avon said. He had just lit a cigarette — an unfiltered one, probably, since he exhaled a plume of smoke and delicately picked a few flakes of tobacco off his tongue. “I enjoy dishing the dirt as much as the next fellow, but there has been a disappointing lack of military intelligence in this stream of consciousness rubbish. I want to hear about troop movements, not baked ziti.”

“Well, clients do mostly talk about personal things,” Carnellfi said. 

Avon took another drag on the cigarette, pulled the pad off his own forehead, and strolled past Orac to the head of the treatment couch. He pillowed Carnellfi’s head on his arm, and slipped the cigarette between Carnellfi’s enticingly parted lips.

After the shared cigarette was finished, Carnellfi asked, “How did you know that I smoke?”

“Doctors often do. They think themselves invulnerable, I suppose.”  
“But you don’t.”

“Quite the contrary. In this line of work, I won’t live long enough for the health risks to catch up with me.” 

Avon settled back in the chair, treating himself to a leisurely appraisal of the scenery. He knew that most connoisseurs preferred tight trousers in such situations, but to Avon, the pup-tent effect pro-duced by showing a basket in loose trousers granted more subtle pleasures. 

“I’ll release you in a moment,” he said. “Just at present I’m enjoying the delectable spectacle of you lying before me bound and helpless, wondering if your throat is about to be cut ear to ear...” (Avon traced one languid fingertip across Carnellfi’s throat, as ineffective a threat of violence as one could find in a month of Sundays) “...or whether a fate worse than death awaits you.”

“You’re flirting with me,” Carnellfi said.

Avon nodded. “Oh yes. A harmless bit of amusement, and we intergalactic terrorists experience so few of them.”

“I know about Blake, of course,” Carnellfi said. “Everyone does,” (Avon flinched, disliking the im-putation of either fame or notoriety to his lover). “But you seem like an unlikely sort of politico.”

“Oh, I’m not — political, I mean, rather than unlikely.”

“Then how’d you get into this mess in the first place?”

“I suppose you could call it a fraudian slip.”

“Jokes are often a way of averting consideration of sensitive issues. Are you troubled by finding me attractive?”

“I’m never troubled by finding anyone attractive, it’s only behaviour that bothers me. Logically, there are only three options,” Avon said. “You might be genuinely unwilling, or incapable of consenting because of the drugs. To take advantage would be immoral. Then again, you might not be unwilling at all, in which case Blake would have my head. That’s part of the problem, you see — he could accept rape as a weapon of war more readily than a roll in the hay. I’ll hurt Blake for any number of reasons, including for his own good and my own amusement, but not over a piece of trashy trailer trade like you. So don’t bother thinking that you can drive a wedge between us by seducing me,” Avon said, unfastening the hoops. When he helped Carnellfi sit up, his touch was quite impersonal.

BEGINNING WITH C

“This probably won’t work,” Vila said gloomily. “I mean, no offense, but the best in the business tried adjusting my head, and it’s immune. Impervious.”

“Perhaps the difference was that that was involuntary, and you’re seeking help,” Carnellfi said. “Consider it an experiment. What seems to be the problem?”

“What-you-ma-callit. When you’re afraid of small enclosed places.”

“Claustrophobia.“

“Thought that was Christmas presents... yeah. But I was brought up in the Domes, so I’m afraid of big open spaces too. Liberator is nice, it’s a sort of medium place, but lots of times we’ve got to go somewhere and it would be better not to be as scared as I got everybody to think I am.”

“Very well,” Carnell said, motioning to Vila to lie down on one of the chaise longues in the rest room. 

“Are you going to ask me about my mother?” Vila said, a little nervously.

“I don’t think we have time for long-term therapy. I’m going to try something a little more focussed.”

A few minutes later, the comm link chimed.

“Vila? Come in, Vila,” Gan said. “Are you asleep?”

“He’s hypnotised,” Carnellfi said.

“Well, unhypnotise him, and the two of you come along. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“An excellent meal,” Carnellfi said politely, blotting his spotless lips with the damask napkin. Actually he thought that although it was conventional to roast ganguahens, they were too dry for such treatment and were much better braised.

The Armagnac wasn’t too bad, although Carnellfi really preferred grappa. He knew that for reasons of group dynamics if they only had two brandy snifters it made sense for Blake and Jenna to get them, but he couldn’t help feeling a little insulted about having his brandy served in a glass that evidently came with their last fill-up of rocket fuel.

On the way back to his cabin, he stopped at the wardrobe room, selecting a broad-shouldered, gold-frogged tunic in an eye-colour-enhancing periwinkle blue, and a pair of white trousers. He re-minded himself to knock on Cally’s cabin door and see if she had finished the latest issue of The Intergalactic Quarterly of Lacanian Analysis, or if she was in the mood for a game of 3-D chess.

CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?

“And how would you describe your relationship?” Carnellfi asked.

“Appalling,” Avon said with his usual stately appreciation of disaster. “We’ve nothing in common, don’t agree about a thing, even or especially the most fundamental, and we never stop squabbling.”

“The light of my life,” Blake said, their words overlapping. “Oh, I know that Kerr has to test me, to push the boundaries, and I do wish he’d be at least a bit supportive in public. It’s not easy having a direct report who considers his exceptional work performance an excuse for disrupting the cohe-sion of the group.”

Blake leaned forward confidingly, his clasped hands dangling between his wide-spread knees. Avon pressed back against the flight deck sofa, the image of a man who knows that he cannot prevent something dreadful from happening in the next five minutes, but can at least make sure that it doesn’t involve getting shot in the back.

“Blake’s very fond of management strategy,” Avon told Carnellfi. “Although when it comes down to it he could fuck up a two-car funeral, and it might very well be mine. Isn’t there some sort of super-stition that if you save someone’s life, you become responsible for him? Well, Blake reads that to mean that you then have the right to throw away that person’s life and expect him to be grateful for it.” Avon lit a cigarette, handed it to Carnellfi, and lit another one for himself.

“We’re not allowed to smoke on the flight deck, Doctor,” Blake said, with an equally divided stony glare.

Avon stretched out his legs, crossed at the ankles, crossed his arms, and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. 

“Sometimes I wish he’d just grow up,” Blake said.

“Blake misses the grand traditions of the Senior Service,” Avon said. “The wonderful days when the Captain could dispense summary justice on the quarterdeck, thus allowing him to envision me writhing beneath the lash...”

“Sometimes I really wish he’d just grow up,” Blake said.

GASLIGHT

“By God, I hope you’re in the mood tonight, I hope you’re randy as hell, so I can tell you to just for-get it,” Blake said, once their cabin door ceased resounding. 

“What a pity,” Avon said. “Goodnight.” Through long practise, he could count on nailing the laundry chute with an over-the-shoulder underwear shot as he climbed into bed.

“That yarn you spun him, about how foolish and inept my plans were for the attempt to assassinate High Commissioner Gromsky during his visit to Naryuka! I do remember my recent past, you know, and I know bleeding well we’ve never attempted an assassination, that if we did Gromsky wouldn’t be the target, he’s as close to decent a man as you’d find in the Federation High Command, and we’ve never even been within light-years of Naryuka.”

“After all, Blake, Carnellfi is a creature of the Federation, bought and sold a dozen times over. I don’t think he’s wired for sound, but he might be. And I certainly don’t think I owe him the obligation of strict truthfulness.”

Blake had enough self-control not to ask what Avon owed him.

“You know, Avon, all of you in my crew have the same problem, but you worst of all. You think that you’ll score some sort of victory over me when you finally manage to drive me insane. What you don’t realise is what a blessed relief it would be...”

“You’re wasting your breath, as usual. I’m pretending to be asleep,” Avon said.

BLONDE ON BLONDE

Carnellfi woke up, his temples pounding, a volcanic thirst scalding his throat. He tried to lift his right hand to his aching head and couldn’t, but managed the feat with his left hand.

“There’s a container of water on the console,” Jenna told him. “You can just about reach it.” 

Carnellfi stretched, pulled the tetrapack close to him, pulled out the straw, and drank. With his vision clearing, he could see that he was secured to the copilot’s seat of a two-person flyer with cuffs on his right hand and right ankle. He pulled the used-up tranquiliser patch off his forehead. 

“The law of diminishing returns,” Jenna said. “You were providing less and less useful information, and your presence on Liberator could have led to some unwelcome guests. So this is what we de-cided.”

Jenna opened a comm link. “Servalan? This is Jenna Stannis. As you can see, I have Carnellfi. He’s more or less unharmed. Speak to him if you like. You can establish a fix on my shuttle, of course, but it’s nowhere near Liberator, which is on the move anyway. I’m going to take him to Nxtolotl — I’ll send you the coordinates when I get there, which should be in about five hours. I’ll stay there for three days. That should give you time to round up a hundred thousand credits out of your personal funds.”

“A hundred thousand?” Servalan said. “That’d ruin me.”

“All right, then when the three days are up, I’ll kill him.”

“No — don’t!” Servalan cried out. “I... I need him. Jon, if you can hear me, oh I’m so glad that those murdering bastards haven’t harmed you. Don’t worry, darling, as soon as I can get Travis down to Nxtolotl with the ransom, then you’ll be free, and we can resume our sessions.” For a moment, Servalan almost believed it herself, and longed for Carnellfi’s sympathetic presence, or at least a refill on her prescriptions.

“Speaking of which, if you pay the hundred thou’, we might forget to tell anyone that your shrunken haircut covers your shrunken head.”

“A band of rebels, psychotics, and deviants? Who’d believe you?”

“We’ve got the tapes.” Jenna terminated the link, and busied herself with the controls. “Right, then. We’re on full automatics. Nxtolotl ahoy. That part’s true, but we’ll be there in closer to two hours.”

“Are you crazy?” Carnellfi asked unprofessionally. “Servalan will never pay a ransom for me. In fact, she’s better off with me dead.”

“Oh, we figured that out, of course,” Jenna said. “Probably what would have happened if we’d kept you on board would be the usual wodge of pursuit ships down our throat, with heroic Dr. Carnellfi giving his life for the Federation in the struggle. And you do have your endearing qualities, so we didn’t like to kill you outright, and we certainly didn’t want you to be cut down by friendly fire on our ship. This is what we came up with instead. Nxtolotl’s inhabited, so I’m going to put you down there. I’m not going to spend any bloody three days there — three minutes is more like it — so it all comes down to who you trust. If you trust Servalan, which I for one wouldn’t do any further than I could throw a sofa that I’d nailed down myself, then hang about at the coordinates. I’m sure Travis will appear, although I’d eat my highest-heeled pair of boots if he brings any money along. And if you don’t trust Servalan, then just get the hell out of there and hope you can run where she can’t find you.”

“Run where?”

“Carnellfi, you’re our enemy. We’re not responsible for you.”

“I won’t last long on an alien world with no cover, no friends, no money...”

“Look in the pockets of your tunic. Blake let you have five hundred of those counterfeit credit notes we got from the Gellinean Social Democratic Party; Cally threw in fifty real ones that she says — and I don’t believe her — you won off her playing 3-D chess; and Vila stumped up thirty-seven fifty for the phobia therapy. Avon said you could have one of his bogus credit cards.”

Carnellfi crossed his still-mobile leg over the constrained one, leaned forward, put his chin in the hand that wasn’t handcuffed, and contemplated his gloomy future. If only he had gone into derma-tology.

“We don’t have any fresh food, I’m afraid, but there are some protein packs if you’re hungry.”

Carnellfi shook his head. Jenna thought back to who had been the last to use the shuttle — of course. Vila. She searched until she located the bottle of wine and the glasses (more of the jelly glasses from the fuel station). 

“Here, have a drink,” she said, not unkindly. “Yes, you’re in a mess, but at least you’re not dead yet, and it’s your own fault for throwing in with Servalan, you know.”

“A reasonable person would have said that that offered much better odds than throwing in with a scruffy load of rebels.”

“One thing I’ve learned, Carnellfi, is that being reasonable takes you only so far.” That seemed to remind her of something, so she keyed open the handcuff around Carnellfi’s ankle. He enjoyed a gaze down her low-cut amethyst jacket, and breathed a brief sigh of relief, until she used the cuff to secure his other hand to the remaining unoccupied arm of the chair. She spun the chair around until he faced away from the control console. Jenna conscientiously checked the monitor readouts and the status of the autopilot controls. 

“This is a working shuttle, you know,” she said. “No vizscreen, no cubereader, no music system. Nearly two hours to go to Nxtolotl.” She put one hand inside the neckline of her jacket, uncon-sciously imitating Blake. Jenna took a step forward, her legs straddling Carnellfi’s. 

She seemed to remember from her university Comparative Religions class that the Freudian dogma is that clitoral orgasm is a mere, insufficient substitute for the superior vaginal product. Well, she hadn’t had any recent chances to experiment, and she would never find a more suitable member of the 4F club: find ‘em, feel ‘em, fuck ‘em, and forget ‘em.  
“With handcuffs?” Carnellfi asked her.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU

It’s a fine life if you don’t weaken, Jarriere thought. So far, he had proved himself invaluable to both sides as a facilitator, information collector, information leaker, lantern-holder during impromptu burials (some of which went on intermentably, especially if the guest of honor wasn’t quite dead to start with) and courier of horses’ heads and cannoli. 

Jarriere rode a golf cart to the sixth hole of the Presidential golf course. One of the stout, gum-chewing thugs patted him down and ran a metal detector over him. Jarriere grimaced — what was the point of that, of course he was carrying?

“Okay, Mikey,” the President said, pushing his glasses, in their thick black frames, back on his nose. “Obadiah’s a good boy. I asked him to come here. Whaddaya got for me?”

“Carnellfi — you know, that finook head-shrinker that Servalan goes to? Well, Blake’s got him up on the Liberator.” (Jarriere was a little behind the knowledge curve there.) “I think Servalan’s going for a twofer — she’s gonna send Chris there to grab Carnellfi back, maybe he can glom the ship while he’s up there.” (Actually, what Servalan had said was “I rather think that now he has been in a position to be infected by sedition, Carnellfi has — outlived his usefulness,” to which Chris replied, “Gotcha, Aunt ‘Tonia.”)

”Infamia!” the President said. “That’s what she wants to do, that cunt whore bitch? Bring him back, so she can keep spilling her guts about Our Thing? Mikey, you go up there, find that ship, and then you do the number on Carnellfi, you do the number on Christopher, and then you get the ship.” President Corrado Servalan adjusted the golf cap the better to shade his eyes. “Obadiah, good to see ya, regards to the family. Mikey, gimme a five-iron.”

VOLTE FACE

“Travis... come in, Travis,” Servalan grated. Oh, gods, she thought, the only time you can get somebody whacked overnight is when it turns out you don’t want him to be.

“Supreme Commander,” Travis responded at last, frantically gesturing to one of the mutoids piloting the lead pursuit ship to turn down the karaoke machine.

“The job... for our thing... you know, the case of tomatoes you were supposed to deliver,” Servalan said. “Is it done yet?”

“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? I’m not even down on... you know the place yet. I couldn’t even get near the fuckin’ case of tomatoes, much less deliver it.”

Servalan breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Good. Don’t deliver the case of tomatoes. In fact, I want you to take care of the case of tomatoes, and protect it, and indeed go right ahead and... deliver... any other tomato that tries to get in your way. Especially if it’s a hot little blonde tomato that has a Federation price on its head.”

“I don’t get it,” Travis said. “I mean, you said if I did the job on him, I was going to be made. You were gonna open the books.” (Although it was not part of his instructions, Travis was planning to take care of Blake at the same time, and he’d have to be a made guy after whacking the most wanted felon in the Federation.)

“No details,” Servalan began. “This is an open link. Well, the fact of the matter is that another party took an interest, and if he thinks that he’s going to get my.... well, you know... get him clipped, then he’d better get his head out from between his girlfriend’s legs and think again.”

Travis whistled. “The other party being...?”

Servalan terminated the connection. “Fuckin’ Uncle Jun’,” she said dispassionately, and threw the communicator across the room, where it caromed off an eggshell satin couch, hit a wall covered in white raw silk, and landed in matte-black shards on the white carpet.

_And how do you feel about that?_


End file.
